Month: March 2016

No Man’s Sky starting positions

Posted on by Nimgimli

nomansskycoverSometimes my brain gets stuck on weird things.

Today the No Man’s Sky launch date was revealed (June 21st) and it got me thinking about the game again. In case you’ve not bought a ticket for this particular hype train, No Man’s Sky is a space exploration/combat game (for PS4 & PC, at least initially) that features a huge procedurally generated universe. In theory it is multiplayer but the devs have said that the universe is so large that it’s unlikely you’ll run into other players accidentally until far into the game.

The goal, as far as I can tell, is to reach the core of the universe. I think it’s a pretty ‘loose’ goal and the game is all quite sandbox-y. As you discover planets they will be tagged as being discovered by you, so there is at least some vague perk to finding a planet first.

In order to make reaching the core at least somewhat plausible, your initial spawn has to be a finite distance from that core, right? So we can imagine a kind of fuzzy sphere with the core in the center and that is, generally speaking, the play-space of the universe. Players will start somewhere on the surface of this sphere.

The radius of this sphere will determine how many unique starting positions there are, right? As a sphere expands its surface area increases and we’re all going to start on the ‘surface’ of this conceptualized sphere so that we’re all starting on more or less equal terms, with regard to how long our trip to the core is going to take.

So here is my concern (and to be clear, it’s not a major concern, just something to muse about). A Day 1 player gets his/her starting spot and heads core-ward and every planet s/he encounters is a discovery for him/her. This is the pioneer player.

Six months after launch it’s Christmas and a gamer gets a PS4 and a copy of No Man’s Sky. When this new player starts, will there be a ‘fresh lane’ for him to follow to the core? Or will he wind up following in the footsteps of a gamer who started the game earlier? This player is more like a settler, following in the footsteps of those who came before.

I need a math whiz. We need to estimate the sales numbers of No Man’s Sky, calculate the desired amount of time it takes to reach the core, and the average velocity core-ward of a typical player. From there we can calculate the radius of the play-field and from that, the total ‘starting area’ available. Once we know sales estimates and the area of the surface of the play-sphere we can finally know if this is a concern or not. It may be that the No Man’s Sky universe is so large that every player, no matter when they start, will have a fresh, unexplored path towards the core. But if that is the case, I wonder how feasible it’ll be to actually reach the core? Alternatively the universe may be restricted in starting positions which would make playing early desirable so you have a ‘fresh playing field’ to explore.

I told you my mind gets stuck on weird things…

nomanssky2

Protecting my Playstation 4 controller’s analog sticks

Posted on by Nimgimli

A couple weeks back I read a post on Eurogamer titled How to upgrade your Dual Shock 4 – with Xbox One controller parts. My biggest take-away from the article was that a lot of people are having issues with the rubber grips on their PS4 controllers starting to degrade. Both the author of the post and some of the folks in the comments talk about the problem.

I checked my controllers and the rubber still looks sound to me. Maybe I’m naturally ‘gentle’ with my controllers or maybe it’s because I’m a bit OCD about washing my hands (Maybe the oil from your skin breaks down the rubber?) but for whatever reason, I haven’t had any issues yet (my controllers are both from the PS4 launch).

In reading the comments though, I learned that there are covers you can buy for controller sticks and they’re cheap enough that I decided to order them as a preventative measure. I settled on the Grip-iT Analog Stick Covers from Total Control and they cost about $5 for 4 of them.

grip_itsThey arrived earlier this week. It’s a dead simple product; just a little rubber cap. You turn it inside out, set it on top of a stick them flip it back right-side out and in doing so it wraps around the sides of the stick. I had to mash them around a wee bit to get them perfectly centered. They’re shaped like a rubber bottle cap, so they cover the top and sides of the stick but don’t extend to the underside at all. It took just a few seconds to install them.

The intent of the product is to give you better grip, not to protect the analog sticks. So do they help? Yeah, they seem to, at least a little bit. Sometimes if I’m pushing a stick in one direction for a long time (typically the left stick, when I’m running or something) my thumb will slowly slip and I’ll have to reposition it, which means the stick re-centers for a second. Does it really matter for a casual gamer like me? No, not really. But for $5 who can complain?

I guess if I had to complain about anything it’s that the grips come in 2 colors so one of my black controllers has blue stick tops now, but honestly I don’t care. If it really bothered me I could go all-out and spend $10 for two sets I guess. I do like that these are not PS4 specific so you can use the same covers on your Xbox sticks as well.

Over on Amazon there are some 1 & 2 star reviews that complain about the grips sliding around on the stick or even of the grips hitting the controller. Mine haven’t slipped yet but I still have the original rubber on them. I wonder if the slipping concerns are from people who have peeled off the original torn rubber tops? Either that, or the complaints are from gorilla gamers who really mash the stick around. If you’re a gorilla these might not be the right product for you. Of course maybe it’s you gorillas that need them in the first place. Like I said, none of my sticks show any wear and tear, and I use them pretty much every day.